DVD/150: FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1931)

When DRACULA became a huge hit, Universal Pictures wanted another Gothic horror film so chose Mary Shelley's 1818 novel FRANKENSTEIN, already filmed three times during the silent era.

Universal had the rights to a 1927 stage version which formed the film's basis, only Shelley's premise remains.

 

FRANKENSTEIN's huge success confirmed Universal as *the* horror studio.  It's sequel THE BRIDE OF... is a rare instance of a sequel being better than the original, but susequent films dwindled into tawdry retreads.  After Universal, Hammer had a seven film run which also repeated declining quality.

 

 

Actor Bela Lugosi and director Robert Florey were first choices but after some make-up tests they were ousted when Univeral offered it to British director James Whale for only his third film.

Despite creakiness and Colin Clive's over-wrought Victor Frankenstein, Whale's influential film still delivers. with unsettling imagery that continues to haunt us down the decades.

Shelf or charity shop? A re-animated keeper.  If ever a performance can be said to have been iconic it's Boris Karloff's Creature: thanks to Jack Pierce's extraordinary make-up Karloff gave us a timeless Creature. Despite the diluting of the image down the years, his actual performance is still fantastic. Scenes that have stayed with me down the years: the tilted perspective of the opening graveyard scene, Karloff's first appearance walking backwards towards us, the fizzes and crackles of the laboratory equipment during the re-animation, the towering film sets, the knife-edge tension of the Creature playing with Little Maria by the lake, Mae Clarke's Elizabeth draped across her bed echoing Fuseli's "The Nightmare" and the moment in the mill where Victor and the Creature's faces are seen together through the spinning machinary.

FRANKENSTEIN at Covent Garden - Frankenstein's at it again... this time on point!

Surely ice-skating is the only area of story-telling that has not been utilized to re-tell Mary Shelley's classic horror novel FRANKENSTEIN.  Since it's publication in 1818 it has been revisited, re-imagined, re-written, re-filmed... all a testament to Shelley's original idea of how man can be brought down through hubris and by his refusal to face the consequences of his actions.

However there is so much going on in her novel that any part of it can be picked on as a way to view the material.  And now it's latest incarnation is in a full-length production by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden and I saw it's 5th performance last week - always nice to be able to say that, with Royal Ballet productions it's usually the 305th!

Liam Scarlett is the Royal Ballet's artist-in-residence and this is his first full-length production for the company and it was marvellous to watch due to Scarlett's firm grasp on the narrative allied to a genuinely thrilling score by American composer Lowell Liebermann.

Scarlett stays mostly true to Shelley's story, dropping the framing device of Victor Frankenstein recounting his tale to the captain of a ship that rescues him and also the abortive creation of a mate for the creature but adds his own new spin as a finale which works within the spirit of the text.

The genesis of the story is almost as famous as the novel itself.  In 1816, aged only 19, Mary Godwin, her lover Percy Shelley and Mary's half-sister Claire Claremont travelled across Europe to visit Claire's lover Lord Byron and his physician John Polidori in the rented Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva.  Bad weather kept them indoors and Byron suggested they all try writing scary stories.  Mary struggled with hers but a later talk about experiments in galvanization gave her the idea of a man attempting to revive a corpse - the fact that she was still grieving for her baby who had died only two months before must have influenced this idea.

The story both reflected and foreshadowed Mary's life which was shrouded with death: her mother Mary Woolstonecraft died a month after giving birth to her, three of her children with Shelley died young, her step-sister Fanny killed herself as did Shelley's abandoned wife Harriet, Shelley drowned at sea in 1822 and Mary herself died aged only 53 in 1851 from a suspected brain tumor.

Liam Scarlett's production also utilizes a moody set design from John Macfarlane and David Finn's exceptional lighting design, along with a mood-setting front cloth of a skull seen in profile which at the start of the second act turned to face the audience - wooo!  As I said it was all marvellous to watch but, on reflection, the most negligible thing about the show was Scarlett's choreography.

I am no balletomane but time and again I found myself wondering how many scenes of prancing maids and servants does the story of FRANKENSTEIN need?  There was also a puzzling tavern routine which sat in between the anatomy lecture-room scenes which did nothing to forward the story and seemed to be there only to give the female members of the corps a chance to whore it up. 

I can appreciate that Liam Scarlett wanted to make the character of Elizabeth more than just a typical horror story heroine but again, when you realize that you are watching yet another interminable pas-de-deux for her and Victor, then you know something is off-kilter.  I must say however that Sarah Lamb as Elizabeth danced the role well, full of grace and humanity.

What made me brew on this so strongly was that the final confrontation between Victor and his Creature must surely be the emotional climax of the show but here it just did not spark - was it because we had the Male Team B of Tristan Dyer as Victor and Ryoichi Hirano as the Creature?  The only thing I could compare it to was the end of Matthew Bourne's SWAN LAKE which, no matter the dancers, always delivers an emotional punch.

There were fine performances from Ethan Bailey as William, Victor's young brother who plays a fatal game of blind-man's-bluff with the Creature in one of the more suspenseful scenes, James Hay was good as Frankenstein's friend Clerval, the always good Itziar Mendizabel did what she could with the minimal opportunities she had as the housekeeper Madame Moritz while her tragic daughter Justine was danced well by Francesca Hayward.

Despite my issues with the choreography I am glad we saw the show and more than enjoyed living through the story - which is more than 8 of the main 10 characters do!  It's few remaining shows are sold out but hopefully it will rejoin the repertoire - maybe in 2018 to mark the novel's 200th anniversary?

In the same week, by some odd stroke of luck, we found we had booked a Horror Triple Bill at the theatre: FRANKENSTEIN, DOCTOR FAUSTUS at the Duke of Yorks and JEKYLL & HYDE at the Old Vic - who came out the winner?  Constant Reader, read on...

Constant Reader I am ALL behind... now where was I? Oh yes. National Theatre Part 2.So it turns out, you can keep your jukebox musicals or over-hyped film-to-stage west end shows... the show that is the #1 fight-for-a-ticket production is the National's FRANKENSTEIN by Nick Dear, directed by Danny Boyle and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller who are alternating the roles of 'Victor' and 'The Creature'.

The Benedict Frankenstein/Jonny Creature combo was the one that made most sense to me but the only performance we managed to get was last Saturday matinee. It made an interesting contrast to leave the brilliant sunshine and chattery throng to sit in the darkened Olivier feeling the cold clutch of the undead. Well, I was never that much on sitting in the sun - give me a thumping, edge-of-the-seat work of pure theatre anytime. The immersion begins even before the play starts - Underworld's unsettling, electronic soundscape plays in the foyer as you enter the Olivier (the urge to use their BORN SLIPPY track was obviously ignored!) and, as we settled into our stalls seat in the red-lit auditorium, we nervously eyed the huge bell that hung above the stalls with an actor waiting patiently underneath holding a rope! Sure enough BONG went the bell and all attention was on the circular frame that had slowly rotated on the stage showing the form of the Creature within, echoing Leonardo's Vitruvian Man.

Unlike other adaptations of Mary Shelley's novel, the story is initially told through the eyes of The Creature - from his 'birth' pangs to Victor's rejection and on to his scary first experience of the real world and the hatred of strangers. It was a hypnotic beginning and one that acclimatised you to Jonny Lee Miller's astonishing physicality as the Creature. Naked, flapping and rolling about on the Olivier stage, Miller literally threw himself into the role. It also got you accustomed to Danny Boyle's vision of the play and his full use of all physical theatre trops - lighting, sound effects, music, water and fire, all of which culminated in the thrilling appearance of a steam train - all bright lights and showers of sparks.
The story then settled down to the Creature's education at the hands of Karl Johnson's kindly blind professor, driven from his university into a rural exile by a political regime. It was the first of many reflections and echoes between characters that Nick Dear has found in the tale. Needless to say, the Creature's idyll cannot last long as the Professor's son and daughter-in-law react in horror at his appearance and he responds by wreaking revenge on the family by burning the house.

The Creature journeys to Geneva where Victor has returned to his father's house and to his fiancee Elizabeth, who he has ambivalent feelings for at best. Benedict Cumberbatch is not an actor I warm too but here his shtick of cerebrally emotional coldness was well-used as Victor. When Victor's infant brother is found murdered, he confronts his creation who presents him with an ultimatum - make him a female companion so he will know love and he will vanish from his creator's life. Initially horrified, Victor's vain-glorious ambition cannot be suppressed and he agrees to the deal, which, as we all know, leads to disaster...
I will admit that at times Nick Dear's script was alarmingly thin when it came to the supporting characters but the confrontation scenes between Cumberbatch and Miller were wonderfully vivid, owing much to the chemistry between the two actors. The fact that they are alternating the roles I suspect gives them a rare insight into the characters and each other as performers.

As I have said, of the two I found Miller absolutely thrilling. He has filled out a bit since his Sick Boy days but this solidity works well for the Creature, making him more believable as a figure of menace. He gave a nuanced performance, by turns bitter, humorous, angry and with a genuine feeling of loneliness.Karl Johnson made the most of his featured role as Professor De Lacey, just the right actor to 'settle' into the play with as his character is the first the Creature relates to after the sturm und drang of the production's opening.

Being the National we have the inevitable non-traditionalist casting which works both for and against the production. Naomie Harris brought vitality and intelligence to the role of Elizabeth - I am still haunted by the execrable performance by Helena Bonham-Carter in the misguided Branagh film - but even she can do nothing with Dear's line of "We'll have less of that" when the Creature touches her breast in the bedroom scene. Excuse the pun but there were titters.

Sadly the same cannot be said for George Harris as Victor's father. All I can say is that Victor and murdered William must both take after their mother. It's not the fact that he's black that makes him stand out, it's the fact he is so under-powered as an actor. In a fairly anonymous support cast, Ella Smith was a delight as Elizabeth's maid Clarice.

It's 15 years since Danny Boyle directed a play and it seems that he has burst back onto the stage with a fevered imagination that rarely shows in his films - THE BEACH anyone? As I said the show is a real Sensurround experience with Mark Tildesley's set, Bruno Poet's lighting and Underworld's score all contributing to the experience, but it's Danny Boyle's vision that holds it all together.How pissed must the National be that this sell-out production is only going to have a run of 3 months thanks to the lead actor's availability? I would hope that they will be able to revive it at a later date - but would it have the same impact with two other actors?

If only there was some way for Cumberbatch and Miller to be cloned... they could run it till the wheels dropped off then. Cloned... *reaches for test-tube and Bunsen burner*